Today marks the end of one chapter and the beginning of something even bigger.
PathAI is being acquired by
Roche for up to $1.05B, and I still can't fully believe I'm typing those words.
But before I talk about where we're going, I have to talk about where it all started.
Ten years ago, I got a cold email from a guy named
Andrew Beck. He wanted to grab coffee. I was interviewing for faculty positions. I almost didn't go. I'm glad I did.
We sat down, and within minutes Andy told me he was a pathologist. I remember looking at him and thinking: what the hell is a pathologist? I had no idea. But I listened. The more he talked about what AI could do for disease diagnosis, the more I realized this guy wasn't just a doctor with a big idea. He was someone who could change the way medicine works, and change outcomes for real patients who desperately needed better answers.
I was a grad student at the time. We shook hands and decided to build PathAI together, with a mission to improve patient outcomes through AI-powered pathology. Looking back, I feel incredibly lucky. Lucky that Andy sent that email. Lucky that I showed up. Lucky that we found each other at exactly the right moment.
What followed was years of building something we deeply believed in, even when it was hard, even when the path wasn't clear. And through it all, we were never alone.
To Andy: thank you for sending that email. For your brilliance, your vision, your boundless optimism and your relentless commitment to patients. None of this exists without you.
To our team, especially the ones who joined before it was obvious and believed in the mission before the milestones: you are the backbone of everything we built.
To our investors and advisors who took a chance on a grad student and a pathologist with a big idea: your belief gave us the runway to do something that truly matters.
To the pathologists, clinicians, and researchers who partnered with us and kept us honest: thank you for trusting us with something so important.
And to my family: to my wife, who supported this journey despite her shock that I wasn’t going to be a professor, and to my parents and brother, who believed in me and supported me every step of the way — thank you doesn't come close.
Joining Roche, one of the world's most respected leaders in diagnostics and oncology, means the technology we've built will now reach patients at a scale we could only dream of in that coffee shop. That's always been the point.
We didn't build PathAI to reach an exit. We built it to make a difference. And with Roche, the best is yet to come.